


(go back to) the very beginning

by saturnnn



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Hurt Tony Stark, I'm so bad at writing Howard, POV is all over the place, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Time Travel, Tony Stark & Nebula friendship, Tony Stark Time Travel, Tony Stark Time Travels, first its jarvis then tony i guess?, i guess, i just cant resist long song lyric titles okay, mature bc im paranoid, my longest work yet, sssshh, they care ok, title from agnes by glass animals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-20 02:55:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15524529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saturnnn/pseuds/saturnnn
Summary: a time travel thing where tony and nebula try to build a teleportation device to get of Titan and land in stark mansion's hallway. in 1977. whoops.





	(go back to) the very beginning

October 14, 1977  
Edwin Jarvis was a man who had learned to expect many, many strange things after working in the stark household or half a decade. Once, Howard tried to create a teleportation device and accidentally teleported a pen into his son's only stuffed animal, a teddy bear. The bear promptly melted in front of two-year-old Tony's eyes. Another time, a few years earlier, Jarvis' name had been called into Howard's lab only to hear a faint shriek and see an unknown man dressed in black falling to the ground. Turned out that the man was an assassin and Howard knocked him out by repeatedly hitting him on the head with a large metal spoon he was melting down for aluminum. Jarvis had even seen the tesseract in use one day at SHEILD, stumbling upon a demonstration by accident when looking to deliver some urgent papers from Maria to Howard.

So yes, Edwin Jarvis had seen some strange, odd and unexpected things. None as strange, however, as a blinding blue spark knocking him off his feet as he walked down one of the numerous halls of the stark mansion. 

When Jarvis again opened his eyes, on alert, he made out two figures through the slight smoke and his returning vision. One, a beat up man who looked similar to Howard when he was younger, and the other a... blue woman?

Yes, Jarvis could already tell this was going to be a long day. 

"Who the hell are you?" Edwin stumbled to his feet along with the strangers. "And how, pray tell, did you get in?"

The man's head snapped to his voice, finally acknowledging the butler's presence. "...shit. Neb, we may have gone a bit father than intended." The battered man's eyes wandered quickly around the long hall before snapping back to Jarvis' face.

The blue, cyborg looking woman (Jesus, Edwin might need a drink) replied icily to the man, "How far, exactly?" 

"... Give or take some important dates in my memory, 40 years?" The man replied questingly, as if afraid his companion would hurt him if he fully confirmed his (rather odd) suspicions. He took a step toward Jarvis, causing the caretaker to step back and hold out a hand, as if stopping an animal. 

"Tell me who you are and how you got here or I will call authorities immediately!" Edwin blurted out nervously. He felt like something was off about these people (besides the obvious). 

"Steve Coulson," the man, Steve apparently, offered up. It sounded rehearsed. Edwin always excelled on spotting lies. "You are Edwin Jarvis, correct?"

"How do you know my name?" 

"You are, good. Okay. My companion is Nebula." The woman, nebula, slightly snarled as if offended by being called 'Steve's' companion, but said nothing. Jarvis thought he could see affection in her nearly solid black eyes. "Neb's an alien, if you couldn't tell by the blue skin, metallic body parts, and the soulless hatred in her eyes. You're most likely familiar with the concept of aliens, considering who you work for."

So the man knew his name and where he worked. This couldn't be good, but Jarvis had not yet called for someone as the trespassers appeared to be unarmed and with no possessions visible beside a small smoking wired box the man held. He wouldn't underestimate them yet, however. 

"So, J, you look to be about, what, 50 at this point? Plus your... young Sir Anthony doesn't seem to be tagging around with you, probably at boarding school, so I'm guessing late seventies?" The man paced a few steps around the hall as he spoke with a familiarity that alarmed the Stark's employee and friend.

"It's 1977, sir, and I'm taking you to Mr. Stark. You'd be smart to not resist," Jarvis stated, mumbling a "Lord knows he'll know what to do with you two better than me" under his breath. 

Edwin walked past the duo and down the hall, expecting them to stay planted right where they were. He still didn't know how they got here or where they came from, but he felt he could trust them enough not to kill him when his back was turned. To his surprise, the two exhausted and beaten up figures followed about 5 feet behind him after a short whispered conversation. 

The group reached their destination in less than a minute, Jarvis rapping on Howard's office door with the duo peering from behind him at the door. He called Howard's name before being invited in. Howard sat at his large mahogany desk, nursing a glass of whiskey and going over what seemed to be paperwork.

"Sir, I've brought visitors." Jarvis moved closer to Howard and leaned in as to speak more privately. "They just showed up in the hall with a flash of blue. I don't know how they got here but they don't seem hostile. The woman is an alien named Nebula, apparently, and the other says he is Steve Coulson, but I don't believe him."

Still speaking quietly, Howard looks over Edwin's shoulder and jokes, "Hey, at least the man's a looker. Kind of looks like me, actually. Handsome." 

"Yes sir, exactly what I first thought when they appeared out of mid-air," Jarvis drawls sarcastically. Although the Stark tried to defuse the situation by joking, Edwin can hear his silent thanks for alerting him of the situation. Howard had always been a paranoid man. 

"You two care to share with the rest of the class?" 'Coulson' spoke up again. Damn, Howard and he were similar. 

Sure enough, Howard smirked at the man. "I like you. So, what's your real name? You managed to get into my house. This could turn into a job offer, after a shit load of questioning."

"To be fair, it was a total accident that Neb and I ended up here. We'll be out of your hair in no time if you let us leave to roam the great wide world again."

Howard seemed impressed with 'Steve's" deflection of his question if his smirk was anything to go by. He spoke up again.

"Tell us your name and I'll consider." The stranger deeply sighed in response. He moved more into the rather small room and sat down at the chair across from Howard, sighing once again.

"Damn, well I guess I don't really have any choice now, do I? You sure are persistent, Howard." Said mentioned man raised both eyebrows. Another sigh sounded out from opposite him. Edwin was getting tired of the waiting game.

"Fuck, fine, if you really must know I'm Tony Stark, your son from the future, but who's to say you'll even believe me so what's really the point, father dearest?"

Jarvis was shocked. Howard looked shocked, even if he was good at hiding it. Nebula had migrated to the corner of the office, and when Jarvis chanced a glance at her, she looked a strange combination of bored and smug. Howard seemed to find his voice again as Tony looked at him expectantly.

"As in, my seven year old son from the future?"

"Ah yes, so it is the late seventies. You must have just shipped me out to school, right? I pity old me, that place was hell." Jarvis was more and more confused by this version of his young sir by the moment. Everything matched up, and he did rather look like a more stylish, 20 years younger, war-ridden version of his father (the butler made a mental note to ask him about what'd happened if Tony didn't explain now.) although Jarvis had accepted Tony's claim, Howard was still... skeptical.

"You were right in saying I probably wouldn't believe you. I'll need more proof, if you don't mind me asking." Tony gave a small smile, resigned.

"Fair enough. Ask away."

Howard wasted no time in responding. "How did you get here? What happened to you? What year are you from? Why are you traveling with an alien? When-" 

"Woah, Woah, one question at a time, please," Tony cut off Howard. "To make a very long, decade-spanning story short, I'm basically an asshole superhero of sorts now, I guess, and it's currently 2018 when I'm from. I come to your planet slash time in peace and all that. Earth has had a lot more experience in aliens than it does in 1977, and there's a big universal shit pile of an issue right now in which a very powerful space raisin wanted to wipe out half the universe to make balance, or some bullshit like that? But anyway, I met neb here on a planet called Titan, the dude, Thanos' home planet. there was a lot of fighting, yadda yadda yadda, but then Thanos actually did wipe out half the universe, apparently, so that's real fuckin fun." Tony seemed to get agitated and on edge, and glanced back at Nebula, who was still leaned against the wall. She gave him a small, reassuring smile (Jarvis was still trying to figure out their strange relationship and it looked like Howard was as well.) Tony took a deep breath and continued. 

"Anyway, Neb and I were the last two on the planet after the other half disintegrated. we set up a quick camp in her broken ship, treating wounds and such for about a week. We couldn't get the ship to work to fly back to Earth so I quickly tried to macgyver a teleportation device together. It worked, obviously, but I guess I overshot it and now we're here. I'm sure we could get back, with some modifications and repairs to this junk pile." Tony held up the small, messy device to prove his point. it had only just stopped it's light smoking. 

Howard was slightly in awe of his future son, who was apparently a superhero and a genius. "Has science advanced so much in 41 years that it's that easy to pull together a teleportation device in a few days?"

"Nah, I'm a bit ahead of the pack. Following in your example and all that, I suppose." Tony seemed humble, which was a surprise to Jarvis. Howard had never been modest about his genius.

"So half the universe is dead? As in, fully dead, never coming back?"

"They'll be coming back if we can have a say in universal changes, but we don't really know, which is hellish and horrible. Right now we're just on a murder mission for Thanos, next stop meeting up with whoever's left of my ex superhero boy band." Tony's voice gained a bit of bitterness at the end. Whether the 'ex superhero boy band' or this Thanos, Jarvis couldn't figure out. Edwin couldn't really wrap his head around how much Anthony seemed to change as he grew up. He was incredibly guarded, and the look in his eyes screamed that he'd been through hell and back. Coming back to the wrong time after such a traumatic event and seeing his most likely dead caregiver and also probably dead not so great father probably wasn't helping. 

Howard seemed to think the same thing too. he pushed himself out of the office chair and announced, "Come on, I'll take you down to my workshop. You can get started on trying to fix your device. if you're tired, however, I could just have Edwin show you to a room?" Tony got up as well.

Tony hesitated. "...I'll go with getting a room. it's been a long day." He looked over to Jarvis.

Jarvis smiled. "Right this way, sir."

**Author's Note:**

> listen ive never seen anything else marvel besides the mcu movies and some agents of shield so jarvis and howard are probably s o ooc but fuck it this was fun to write and im actually pretty proud of it  
> i have no idea if this is ever going anywhere  
> please validate me in the form of kudos and cOMMENts ill love you forever  
> im tired its 1 am


End file.
